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hi everyone. long time no talk to, hope all is well. sorry i've not been around in a loooooooooooong time, it's been insanity :p

i have a problem with my fish's water. it's green, very green. like a neon green. i just changed the filter about two weeks ago, and did a drastic water change to clear. and now it's green again!

in nearly two years i've never had this problem. i don't know what to do please help!

ty.

a UV sterilizer would clear that up.

Chrisbarnett wrote:a UV sterilizer would clear that up.

agreed. just be sure and get one that can handle the GPH your filter is doing

hmmm, do you know where i can find one for a 20 gallon tank that's not so heavy on the wallet? i couldn't seem to find one that worked for smaller tanks. are their alternate suggestions?

is the green water going to hurt the fish? there doesn't seem to be a change in their behaviour.

I'll try a complete scrub down and filter media change. If you don't get all of the algae, it will only come back quicker.

You can totally build a uv sterilizer. I know, I'm always harping on building stuff, but with a little bit of electronics experience, all it takes is a special tube that allows the UV light pass through and some ultrabright UV leds (and a powersource).

ooh i love to build stuffs! please share the how-tos

There is now diy uv sterilizer plans on the WWW that I know of, but here's my take on it:

Designed to be mounted on the intake for the return pump from your sump (or just the return line if you have a canister).

Take a piece of clear PVC
Wire 8 LEDs 2x4. (4 leds wired in series wired in parallel with 4 leds wired in series) They'll need two 150 ohm resistors as well.
Hot glue them to the tube, distributing across the surface as you see fit.
Two 9v batteries in series to power the whole thing
Plumb it in however is convenient
Voila! UV sterilizer.

Disclaimer: I have not tested this.

Hmm... sounds rather dubious. UV rays from LEDs? Perhaps this is a new
technology? I thought only bulbs can emit UV rays.
Please forgive me if I'm behind the tech news.

I've got this green water problem too. Any time I had a problem with algae in the past was just stuff stuck to the glass. Never affected the water clarity. Not sure what to do either.

My canister filter does 79GPH what kind of UV sterilizer would I need?

I have a 20g tank that had the green water problem too. I did an entire water change, also cleaning everything in the tank but the green water still came back! I bought Kordon's AlgaeQuel solution and that cleared it up.

http://www.kordon.com/kordon/algaequel/index.htm

It's pretty overkill though, a capful can clean a 60g tank! If you have fish in the tank, the high temperature plus algaequel will distress them, making them easy turtle food. That happened to me

The stores around me only had the 18oz bottles, so look for it online for the 4oz bottles. I haven't had the algae issue again, so I have an $18 bottle of useless liquid now. Ah well.

There are also discs that you can toss in and supposedly clear up the water.

here is something i read on turtletails.com you can just put a few pennies in your tank and supposedly the copper is a natural algae killer and doesn't affect or harm the turtles i was thinking about giving it a try next time figure why not put a roll of 50 pennies in a pvc pipe with a few drilled holes and seal up the ends and see what happens


Edit: After reading more up on it id suggest everyone stay away from pennies. someone really needs to update information on certain websites im happy im a member of this forum and im pretty sure so is leo

I would recommend against the pennies. Copper is poisonous to many freshwater and marine organisms (especially invertebrates).

Hmm. Pennies are copper plated zinc. They're only 5% copper, but the 95% zinc is under the copper, making them pretty useless in clearing up algae.

http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fu ... fun_facts2